prostate cancer

For men who undergo a biopsy for a prostate tumor, the big question has been whether to wait and see if the cancer grows slowly, or to treat it immediately with a regimen that could cause incontinence or impotence. What made the decision difficult is that there’s been no good way to tell which kind of cancer a man might have – slow-growing or aggressive – but a new gene-analysis test introduced this week may make the decision clearer. The …

The first major study of long-term daily multivitamin use by nearly 15,000 older men found that it has a modest effect in reducing overall cancer but not, unfortunately, in lowering the risk for prostate cancer. The study was published online today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, to coincide with the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Anaheim. Multivitamins are the most common dietary supplement, regularly taken by at least one-third of U.S. adults. Although there has …

The following is a guest post by Jerry Bembry, journalism professor at Morgan State University. I turned 49 a year ago today. At the time, I considered all the exciting things I wanted to do leading up to my 50th birthday. “Fifty to Fifty,” was what I called my plan, and I began writing down the 50 things I wanted to do before hitting the half-century mark: “Take a cross-country drive, visit the six remaining states that I’ve never been …

"Comedy duo Cheech & Chong have long been associated with pot," starts a recent USA Today post about actor and comedian Tommy Chong, now 74. "Associated with" is kind of an understatement"âthe pair pretty much invented the stoner comedy. Chong has recently been back in the news talking about marijuana, albeit in quite a different context: Diagnosed with prostate cancer, he said he's been turning to cannabis to treat disease symptoms such as wooziness.

For nearly two decades, middle-aged men have been told by their doctors to have a routine PSA test to screen for prostate cancer. But in a major turn-around, a high-ranking government panel said Monday that after reviewing all available scientific evidence, the conclusion was that the test does more harm than good, only saving one life in 1,000. The panel’s message to men: Don’t bother. What you don’t know (probably) won’t kill you. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which …

When 81-year-old billionaire investor Warren Buffett recently revealed he had been diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer after a routine screening blood test, many health experts wondered why a man of his age was even being tested for prostate cancer. Federal guidelines, issued in 2008, strongly advised against testing in men age 75 and older, saying it had little to no value. Yet a new study finds that the number of older men receiving the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test has …